[SOLVED] Why can't I control my fan's RGB individually?

[Thiago Di Giorgio]

Hi Guys, below is my setup:
X570 I AORUS PRO WIFI
16GB Gskill Trident DDR4 3600
GeForce GTX 1660ti
AMD Ryzen 7 3700x

My mobo has only one ADDR RGB 4 pin connector. I bought a CoolerMaster AIO and installed, connecting the fan's power to CPU header and all the other fans (3 CoolerMaster 120) to a hub. I'm using CoolerMaster RGB Controller to control the lighting and here is the problem, I cannot control any of the fan's RGB individually, I can only set one configuration for all.

Can someone help me understanding why this is happening?

Thanks,

 

[Paperdoc]

I fully expect that the ARGB cables from each fan are all connected together in an ARGB Splitter, and that then is plugged into the mobo 3-pin ARGB header. Right?

This means that all three fan light sustems are receiving exactly the SAME control signals from the mobo and do the same thing. The mobo ARGB control system has no way to send out different control signals to multiple devices on one mobo output header. The only way to make them different would be to power and control each ARGB lighting device from a different ARGB controller or header.

By the way, there is a little confusion in your post. You speak of the one ARGB header on your mobo (labelled D_LED with 3 pins), but then you talk about an unspecified Cooler Master AIO system and "CoolerMaster 120" fans. Cooler Master makes both plain RGB and ARGB fans systems with VERY similar names, so we need to know for sure: are the light systems in your three fans of the plain RGB (4-pin) type or of the ARGB (3-pin) type? Your mobo does have one header of each type on board, but you cannot mix light types on a single header.

Anyway, assuming that you do have ARGB fan lights, the only way to get them all to do different things would be to add more separate controllers that can be configured differently. Your single mono ARGB header cannot do it all by itself, and you cannot use the plain RGB (labelled LED_C) header for your ARGB lights.

 

[Thiago Di Giorgio]

I fully expect that the ARGB cables from each fan are all connected together in an ARGB Splitter, and that then is plugged into the mobo 3-pin ARGB header. Right?

This means that all three fan light sustems are receiving exactly the SAME control signals from the mobo and do the same thing. The mobo ARGB control system has no way to send out different control signals to multiple devices on one mobo output header. The only way to make them different would be to power and control each ARGB lighting device from a different ARGB controller or header.

By the way, there is a little confusion in your post. You speak of the one ARGB header on your mobo (labelled D_LED with 3 pins), but then you talk about an unspecified Cooler Master AIO system and "CoolerMaster 120" fans. Cooler Master makes both plain RGB and ARGB fans systems with VERY similar names, so we need to know for sure: are the light systems in your three fans of the plain RGB (4-pin) type or of the ARGB (3-pin) type? Your mobo does have one header of each type on board, but you cannot mix light types on a single header.

Anyway, assuming that you do have ARGB fan lights, the only way to get them all to do different things would be to add more separate controllers that can be configured differently. Your single mono ARGB header cannot do it all by itself, and you cannot use the plain RGB (labelled LED_C) header for your ARGB lights.

Sorry for the confusion. Yes, its all ARGB and I'm not mixing them up.

I thought that if I use the controller I would NOT need to have more headers once all the ARGB things are connected to it and it would identify each device and manage it separately.

So, from what you are saying even if the controller has 4 ARGB ports it cannot control each device individually?

Thanks for the help

 

[Paperdoc]

Not exactly that, no. On many systems, each separate ARGB header is treated as a distinct controller output that can be controlled individually by the controller system. That detail depends on how that controller system was designed - to have individual controllers for each header, or to connect all headers in parallel to a single controller. It also depends on whether the ARGB software utility can work that way, but I would assume that, IF the controller hardware can offer multiple controllers, its software would make use of that feature. I do know that some third-party systems (not on mobos) have at least two separate RGB controller "channels" that can be configured differently using their maker's software.

Most mobos have only ONE ARGB header, so that discussion is moot. I will note also that this is all consistent with the design of ARGB light strips, including the lights in fan frames. RGB light strips contain LED's of three colours normally - Red, Green, and Blue. In an ARGB system, all of them are arranged in Nodes. Each Node contains one LED of each colour and its own Control Chip that controls those theee LED's only. Along the strip, each Control Chip has its own unique address. It listens on a common Address Line for instruction packets adressesd to that Node only and follows that. But from one light strip to another, the addresses for the individual Noe control chips are the same. That is, on virtually all ARGB light strips, the first LED Node groups have the same addresses, and the second Nodes have the same addesses as other strips, which is different from the first Nodes' address, etc. There is no provision for a separate address to be assigned to an indicidual strip. So the only way to get different ARGB strips to display different patterns is to send each strip separate data streams geneeated by separate master controllers, and fed though separate headers.

I was assuming that your mobo has ONE ARGB headeer and hence one controller, and that thus you have all of your ARGB lighting units connected to that one resource by using an ARGB Splitter. That is why all the fans etc. will display exactly the same things. If you want them different, you will have to get and install additional ARGB controllers, one for each strip / fan. BUT even then you will have a dilemma trying to use some software tools to set each separate controller to do different things.

In passing, I will note your thoughts are pretty much opposite from what many others want. So many people want to be sure they can synchronize all their lights to do the same thing.

 

[Thiago Di Giorgio]

Not exactly that, no. On many systems, each separate ARGB header is treated as a distinct controller output that can be controlled individually by the controller system. That detail depends on how that controller system was designed - to have individual controllers for each header, or to connect all headers in parallel to a single controller. It also depends on whether the ARGB software utility can work that way, but I would assume that, IF the controller hardware can offer multiple controllers, its software would make use of that feature. I do know that some third-party systems (not on mobos) have at least two separate RGB controller "channels" that can be configured differently using their maker's software.

Most mobos have only ONE ARGB header, so that discussion is moot. I will note also that this is all consistent with the design of ARGB light strips, including the lights in fan frames. RGB light strips contain LED's of three colours normally - Red, Green, and Blue. In an ARGB system, all of them are arranged in Nodes. Each Node contains one LED of each colour and its own Control Chip that controls those theee LED's only. Along the strip, each Control Chip has its own unique address. It listens on a common Address Line for instruction packets adressesd to that Node only and follows that. But from one light strip to another, the addresses for the individual Noe control chips are the same. That is, on virtually all ARGB light strips, the first LED Node groups have the same addresses, and the second Nodes have the same addesses as other strips, which is different from the first Nodes' address, etc. There is no provision for a separate address to be assigned to an indicidual strip. So the only way to get different ARGB strips to display different patterns is to send each strip separate data streams geneeated by separate master controllers, and fed though separate headers.

I was assuming that your mobo has ONE ARGB headeer and hence one controller, and that thus you have all of your ARGB lighting units connected to that one resource by using an ARGB Splitter. That is why all the fans etc. will display exactly the same things. If you want them different, you will have to get and install additional ARGB controllers, one for each strip / fan. BUT even then you will have a dilemma trying to use some software tools to set each separate controller to do different things.

In passing, I will note your thoughts are pretty much opposite from what many others want. So many people want to be sure they can synchronize all their lights to do the same thing.

In my case I want to have the possibility to configure them separately.

I'm not using the ARGB header, I connected the controller to the internal USB port and to the sata power. Should I connect it to the ARGB header as well? Could this be an issue?

 

[Paperdoc]

You do NOT try to connect an ARGB light device to more than one controller. The key to your situation is a simple word, "the", as in: "I connected the controller to ....". You are using ONE ARGB controller to connect all of your lighted fans, so they all do the same thing because they all get exactly the same signals.

Your mobo does have one ARGB header that you are not using. So you do have two independent controllers with separate outputs, and you could arrange your fans' lighting in two groups. One will continue to be connected to the Cooler Master controller and all of them will do their joint thing. The other group of lighting cables can be connected instead to the mobo ARGB header. Then you would use the utility that came with your mobo, RGB Fusion 2, to control that second group. They would produce different displays - in fact, because you would be using two completely independent controllers, you could not make them match each other. Of course, you would be using two separate software utilities to do this - neither of them can access the other system.